Abstract

This dissertation addresses the question how a factualist naturalistically-minded metaphysical theory can provide truthmakers for negative truths, both necessary and contingent. ;The first two chapters constitute a historical analysis of the different treatments of truthmakers for negative truths proposed by Logical Atomists. ;In Chapter 1, I consider Russell's attempt to use negative facts to provide truthmakers for negative truths. I evaluate the debate between Russell and Demos, and argue that Russell's treatment of negative facts faces the same difficulties he identifies in Demos's position. ;In Chapter 2, I consider Wittgenstein's motivation for adopting absences as correspondents for negative truths. I also examine his arguments against Russell's negative facts. Although Wittgenstein's own account of negative truths avoids the difficulties he identifies in Russell's position, I argue that he fails to give an adequate analysis of absences. ;The last three chapters are more systematic in nature, assessing and developing Armstrong's account of states of affairs. I argue that no satisfactory account of entities that could serve as truthmakers for negative truths is available. I suggest that negative truths can find their ontological grounding in absences of truthmakers. I argue that absences are objective, mind-independent, perceptible, and causally relevant features of the physical world, and as such can be included in naturalist metaphysics. ;In Chapter 3, I provide an exposition of Armstrong's theory of states of affairs and criticize his own account of truthmakers for negative truths. In Chapter 4, I consider and reject a number of alternatives open to Armstrong to satisfy the truthmaker principle without absences. I also propose an account of absences in terms of Armstrong's theory of states of affairs. ;In Chapter 5, I examine how the various ways of providing truthmakers for negative truths compare in the context of Armstrong's combinatorial theory of modality. I argue that Armstrong can satisfy the truthmaker principle without appealing to absences only at the price of abandoning the independence thesis, which is central to his modal theory. Finally, I use Armstrong's analysis of possible states of affairs to further support my account of absences